


Merry Ax-Mas

by FrenchRoast



Category: Animorphs - Katherine A. Applegate
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-28
Updated: 2015-12-28
Packaged: 2018-05-09 20:50:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5554859
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FrenchRoast/pseuds/FrenchRoast
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Animorphs try to introduce Ax to their favorite Christmas traditions...things don't exactly go as planned.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Merry Ax-Mas

**Author's Note:**

> This is a Secret Santa gift for allisonsghost - I'm sorry it's a couple days late, but I hope you enjoy it. I LOVED all of your prompts, but this one especially.

Chrissssstmas. Chrustmuuuhhhs. Cruh-cruh. A strange mouth sound, very jarring. The other Animorphs insist it is a very important human cultural event. For that reason, I was in the mall with Rachel and her youngest sister, Sara.

We were not in the cafeteria (my favorite part of the mall, for that is where one can find the wonderous Cinnabon). Instead, we were standing in a line of humans that led to a human dwelling I had not previously noticed standing in the mall before. It was also unlike the other habitations I had seen; the floor surrounding it was covered in a white, cloud-like material that was solid to the touch, but not tasty like cloud candy. Many colorful boxes sat around the home. Everything was contained inside a fence made of red and white sticks that curved at the top. Sara had called them candy canes, but Rachel said they weren’t for eating, which I found exceedingly disappointing. Humans are inexplicable in many ways, but this practice of using words for things that are tasty for things that are not for eating is especially bizarre. It must stem from their lack of thought-speech, but I’m no xenolinguist.

Strangest of all, an enormous human male clad in red artificial fur sat in a large chair. The human children in the line would, one at a time, sit on his lap briefly, then a lady wearing green artificial furs would push a button that made a bright flash of light, so bright that it seemed to fill the whole mall. The child would remove him or herself from the man’s lap, and the ritual then continued with the next child. Sometimes, adults would hand their infants to the man, and the infants made mouth sounds that were very painful to my human morph’s ears.

There was only one more child before Sara, so we were nearing our turn in the ritual. I assumed that Rachel had brought me to stand in for Sara’s father, since most of the children had two human parents or elders accompanying them. I was very honored to be included in such an important part of their cultural rites, and I was determined to do everything as correctly as possible.

Sara had as piece of paper in her hands, which she showed Rachel and me. “I wrote down what I wanted so it would be easier for Santa,” she told Rachel.

“Are you going to sit on Santa’s lap, too?” Sara asked me. “You know if you don’t, or if you didn’t at least send a letter, you might not get what you want.”

I said nothing. Rachel had ordered me to not answer any questions about Santa, and I had agreed because I didn’t know anything about Santa when she told me. But this question made me begin to panic. I hadn’t sent a letter. Had I? I needed to find out what a letter was. And this Santa person was clearly powerful, if everyone brought their children to him; Rachel had even made sure to bring her little sister. Causing offense could have dire consequences for her family.

I knew what I had to do.

As the light flashed and the child sitting on Santa’s lap jumped down, I ran towards Santa. The green lady tried to stop me, but I nimbly jumped over one of the shiny boxes. Her human lack of legs betrayed her and she lost her balance, toppling over the box. Santa began to stand as I reached him.

“Please Santa, I have to sit in your lap,” I told him. 

“Son, you need to leave immediately,” he said.

“But I didn’t write you a letter! Let. Ter. Terrrrrrrrrr,” I tried to explain. “I have to sit on your lap!” 

Rachel and Sara ran up at this point. Rachel’s face was surprisingly pink. “Santa, I’m so sorry,” she said. “This is Philip, he’s never celebrated Christmas before and doesn’t quite understand how everything works.”

 

* * * * * *

 

A couple days later, Cassie came to collect me at my scoop.

“So there’s more to Christmas than Santa Claus,” she said.

<I hope so,> I said. I had spent the last two days avoiding the others, fearful that I had done irreparable damage to Rachel’s Christmas.

“Santa is more of a children’s thing at Christmas. But there’s a religious part to Christmas as well, and that’s for everyone,” she said, and she spent a few minutes explaining what she called “the reason for the season”, a story with angels and a baby and wise men and a star and gifts. I wasn’t sure how Santa fit in with it, but it made me feel better, knowing I hadn’t ruined everything. Cassie also explained that not all humans celebrated Christmas, and that there were other holidays, including one that both Rachel and Jake celebrated with their father’s side of the family, with lights. She told me to ask them for more information because they’d explain it better than she could.

I decided if I asked, I would ask Prince Jake, not Rachel.

“Now, come on. My church has a Christmas concert that starts in about twenty minutes. I thought maybe we could wing it over and demorph in one of the Sunday school classrooms, then walk over. This morning I left the window cracked open enough for an osprey and a harrier to get through, and I stashed us some regular clothes. We can’t stay for the whole concert, but I thought we could stay for the first hour, until intermission.”

 

The Christmas concert was completely different from the mall ritual with Santa. The room we were had some of the same decorations—there were red and green and gold ribbons, with branches and even entire trees brought from the forest, which was very pleasant and made me think of my scoop, though the trees were adorned with numerous metallic objects I didn’t understand the significance of. At one end, the humans in charge of the concert all wore the same robes, and while I doubt that the songs they sang would be enjoyable to Andalite ears, the vibrations and reverberations the sounds made were pleasing to my morph.

About 50 minutes into our morph time, there was a pause in the music the choir sang, and the human leading them (the music director, Sister Laura) turned and spoke. 

“And now, Father Banion and Father Dougherty will collect the love offering as Sister Margie leads the children’s choir in a song they’ve prepared especially for this concert tonight,” she said. Two men began to pass gold plates from one bench to the next. I watched attentively, and barely heard the children as they sang. Cassie hadn’t told me what to do.

“Cassie?”

“Just pass the plate to the person next to you,” Cassie whispered calmly.

Soon, it was my turn. The gold plate came to the woman next to Cassie; Cassie placed a piece of paper in it, and handed it to me. I held onto it, and looked at her. “I need to put something in it?”

“Just pass it, Ax. I put the paper in for both of us.”

“Oh,” I said, relieved. I tossed the plate to the elderly lady sitting about 3 Earth feet further down the bench.

CRASH!! PLINKplinkpkinkplinklelel.

It fell short and clattered to the floor. Coins spilled out and rolled.

Cassie leaped over me and began scraping everything off of the floor and back into the plate. When she finished and handed it to the lady, she sat back down and buried her face in her hands.

 

* * * * *

 

“Ax-man!”

<Marco?>

“That’s my name, don’t wear it out.” He sat down just outside my scoop.

<I will try not to,> I promised solemnly.

“So I’m thinking with Christmas traditions, the third time’s the charm,” Marco told me.

<I think I should avoid Christmas, Marco. If my experiences with Rachel and Cassie are any indication, Andalites are not good for Christmas.>

“I think you need more Christmas, Ax. Rachel and Cassie were going about it all wrong. You don’t need to do Christmas out in public. The best parts of Christmas are at home. Decorating the tree, eating Christmas cookies, and doing it all with Home Alone playing in the background.”

<Eating cookies?> Eating sounded promising. I’d had a cookie before, and it was delicious. Not as good as a cinnamon bun, but almost.

“I thought you’d like that part. Jake’s gonna bring over the cookies and help us with the tree since my dad has to work.” 

 

At Marco’s, there was a tree inside, just like the ones I had seen at Cassie’s church, only smaller. It lacked all of the metallic decorations that those trees had, however. Jake arrived a few moments after we flew into Marco’s bedroom and demorphed. Marco answered the door while I morphed to human, ready to do my part and eat these much-touted Christmas cookies.

“Here you go, Ax,” Jake said, handing me a cookie as I entered the room with the tree. There were boxes full of metal balls and other ornaments for the tree that Marco had opened. I placed the cookie into my mouth and the sensation was indescribable. The glory! The sweet, sweet goodness. I chewed, and more flavors exploded. Some reminded me of the frosting on the cinnamon buns, some I had never tasted before. They were all beyond human words, even beyond thought-speak. Jake handed me a second, and it was just as wonderful an experience as the first Christmas cookie.

“I love Christmas!” I declared. “COOKIEEEES!” I began to look for more cookies.

“Whoa, dude,” Marco said. “Pace yourself, Cookie Monster. Jake, can you put the movie on while I show him how to hang an ornament?”

Soon, I had helped decorate the tree with Marco’s collection of metal and glass baubles to a point that he and Jake deemed acceptable. It was pretty in a human way, sitting there in the corner next to the couch. It required some trial and error to discover the proper way to hang the ornaments; hanging all the balls of the same color next to each other was apparently very wrong, as was placing them deep within the branches. It was important that they all be visible.

The tree decorated, we three Animorphs sat on Marco’s couch, eating cookies and watching a movie where a human child set up a number of elaborate and painful traps for two humans trying to invade his home without permission. This Christmas tradition was peculiar, but agreeable. Especially the part with the cookies.

“Prince Jake, Marco, can you pause the movie? I need go to your room to demorph. I have only 3 % of my morph time remaining.”

“Just demorph in here, Ax-Man,” said Marco. “There’s more room.”

I stood up from the couch and stood by the tree, where I could still watch the movie as I demorphed. Unfortunately, I don’t have much control over the demorphing process. The first part of my Andalite form that emerged was my tail, which shot out with great force, directly toward the Christmas tree we had so carefully decorated.

The blade of my tail cut cleanly through the middle of the Christmas tree, the top portion of which fell over onto Marco and Jake. They were okay, but the tree was definitely not.

 

* * * * *

 

I ran through the meadow as the sun set. The running felt good. It was distracting.

<Ax!>  
  
<Tobias.>

A red-tailed hawk settled down on a nearby branch. <You can’t avoid the others forever, Ax.>

<I ruined their Christmas!>

<Nah,> Tobias said. <They wanted to share their favorite parts of it with you.>

<Christmas is complicated. And I’m terrible at it.>

<Ax, if it makes you feel any better, a lot of people feel like that. A lot of people hate Christmas time.>

<They do?>

<Sure. Not everyone has nice families or sometimes they’re all alone. It’s hard to see other people having a great time, knowing no one is doing anything for you. I used to be one of those people. But then one year, I realized something, and now I have my favorite part of Christmas, too.>

<What did you realize, Tobias?>

<Morph harrier and I’ll show you,> he said. A few minutes later, we were both flying over the city, towards the neighborhoods Jake and Rachel and Marco lived in. There were lights! Lights I’d never seen before.

<Were these lights always here? They’re beautiful.> And they were. Some were simple, hanging off of the eaves of human dwellings, others were larger, multicolored, on trees or all through the yards in front of the houses. Not every house had them, but so many did. Some houses with no lights had other decorations. 

<Nope,> Tobias replied. <And that’s my favorite part of Christmas. People put all of this effort into these light displays. It can take hours to set all of this up, and they do it just to make the world a little prettier, a little brighter for the rest of us, a bunch of strangers who don’t even know them. It’s something humans do without expecting anything in return. To me, that’s what Christmas is about, Ax. Trying to put good out there into the world, and hoping that more good will come of it. It’s what the religious story boils down to, and it’s what the secular celebration is about, too.>

<And cookies,> I reminded him. 

Tobias laughed. <Yeah, also the cookies.>


End file.
